Travels with Dahon, and Sam

I've been riding my Dahon quite a bit this spring. It's actually my most ridden bicycle at this point. Besides it's easy "grab 'n go" nature, it's fun to toss it in the trunk for quick adventures. For instance, a few weekends ago, I was planning to drive Henry down to Dayton to stay overnight with his cousins. My first thought was to throw my Jones in the car to ride at MOMBA in Dayton after dropping Henry off, but the trails were too wet in this soggy spring. Instead, I tossed the Dahon in the trunk, and rode some rails-to-trails near Dayton.

I started at the Beavercreek trailhead at the 9/11 memorial:

I cruised east along the trail and enjoyed the sunny morning, ending up at the Xenia station:

Nothing extraordinary, but a nice ride on a new trail, made easier with my little folder.

I rode some super extreme doubletrack on the way back:

It handled the dirt road fine, thanks to my smooth rolling Tioga tires:

$20 each! I wish good tires for my 700c bikes were so cheap.

Later that week, I was heading out to Kroger for an evening grocery run, and Sam wanted to come along. I was a little wary, because he hadn't ridden that far (~12 miles) before, but he was up for the ride. I brought the trailer for the kitty litter we were buying:

I was out to buy special non-clumping little for our newest family member, Gracie:

Apparently, some kittens eat the clumps of normal kitty litter, and that makes them sick. But Gracie seems pretty good about not doing that so far.

But back to our ride: I needn't have worried about Sam, he did fine the whole distance, though I couldn't get him to volunteer to pull the trailer up the hill. He was still leading when we were almost home:

Sam is turning into quite the rider this spring. One evening when Henry and Kate were at a soccer camp, I bribed Sam into a longer ride by saying we could stop at Ugly Dumb Fish. He was ready to go for this reward!

Over our ice cream, I mentioned that we could try to ride to Jeni's next time (another four miles further away), and maybe go to the new library at the same time. When we realized the new library had the grand opening that evening, we decided to keep on rolling. We even stopped to exercise partway there:

We made it to the library:

Yep, I was on my Dahon:

We both enjoyed our time exploring the new library:

And I ended up with a pretty good sized stack of books to carry home. Sam did volunteer to carry the water bottle, though. All in all, he rode 18 miles that day. I told him that was the second longest daily total in the family!

All these fun miles on the Dahon... has got me thinking about a Bike Friday now. Maybe when my bike budget recovers.